Yeltsin Asks 80% Cut in Warheads for U.S., Russia

President Boris N. Yeltsin, undertaking a sweeping disarmament program, proposed Wednesday that Russia and the United States reduce their strategic arsenals to as few as 2,000 nuclear warheads each, cuts of more than 80% from present levels, and to agree not to aim them at each other.

Yeltsin, who will present his ideas to President Bush at Camp David, Md., on Saturday, also called for creation of a jointly operated global defense system, similar to that envisioned in the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars” program, that would provide protection against nuclear attacks.

In his first major foreign policy move as president of independent Russia, Yeltsin sought to put his nation at the forefront of the international movement for disarmament.

“Nuclear weapons and other means of mass annihilation in the world must be eliminated,” said Yeltsin in a noontime televised speech urging the world’s other declared nuclear powers--Britain, China and France--to join in radically reducing their arsenals.

“Conditions are now ripe for major new steps aimed at arms reduction. We are taking some of them unilaterally, and others on the basis of reciprocity,” he said.

Yeltsin said he will present specific proposals at a special summit session of the U.N. Security Council in New York on Friday. These will include ways to tighten international controls on uranium, on chemical and biological agents used in making weapons and on technology with military as well as civilian purposes. He said he also plans to propose an international agency to oversee disarmament.

But Yeltsin stressed in his 20-minute address to the nation that he is already beginning to implement a broad 10-point program with the goal of substantially reducing Russia’s own nuclear and conventional forces and cutting its military spending, an effort to demilitarize a country that has been spending up to a quarter of its income on arms.

Going beyond measures announced by former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev last October, Yeltsin said he is halting the production of the long-distance Blackjack and Bear heavy bombers, stopping the manufacture of air- and sea-launched cruise missiles and eliminating more than half of the tactical nuclear weapons Russia now holds.

Yeltsin added that Russia has accelerated the pace of dismantling the nuclear weapons that will be eliminated under the arms reduction treaty signed last summer by the former Soviet Union with the United States; the required 30% will be eliminated in three years rather than seven, he said.

Russia is also reducing by half the patrols conducted by its nuclear-missile submarines, Yeltsin said, and it will restrict ground maneuvers over the next year to no more than one division and air maneuvers to no more than two bomber squadrons at a time.

He is prepared, he said, to move even faster and more boldly if the West, especially the United States, is prepared to take parallel or reciprocal actions; more tactical nuclear weapons could be eliminated, for example, and those still deployed could be withdrawn and stored.

“The measures that we are taking in the sphere of disarmament are not undermining in any way the defense potential of Russia and member states of the Commonwealth (of Independent States),” Yeltsin said, hoping to allay concern over such far-reaching changes in the country’s defense posture.

“We are seeking to achieve the reasonable minimum sufficiency of nuclear and conventional weapons. This is our main principle in the establishment of the armed forces. Sticking to this principle will make it possible to save considerable resources. They will be channeled to meeting civilian needs and implementing the (economic) reform.”

Yeltsin said that defense spending, which has been reduced 20% in the past two years, will be cut a further 10% this year and that the amount of arms and equipment purchased will be slashed by 50%.

“I am convinced these proposals meet the interests of our country and other states of the world,” Yeltsin said. “If they can be realized, our lives can become not only calmer and more secure, but we will live more comfortably.”

Secretary of State James A. Baker III, who met with Yeltsin as his taped speech was broadcast, declined to evaluate the Russian proposals afterward or to compare them to the proposals, many of them parallel, that Bush had made in his State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday night.

“Both presidents now have offered some unilateral steps, and both presidents have offered the possibility of certain reciprocal steps,” Baker said after the two-hour meeting with Yeltsin. “There will now be a consideration by both sides of those proposals.

“Both presidents have made far-reaching proposals that I think reflect the new political realities,” Baker added, and both “are worthy of significant consideration.”

Bush had proposed a cut of nearly 50% in nuclear warheads if the states of the former Soviet Union do the same. He suggested doing away with all land-based multiple-warhead missiles and cutting submarine-launched nuclear missiles by one-third; converting a large portion of the strategic bomber fleet to deliver conventional rather than nuclear bombs; suspending production of new nuclear warheads and acquisition of new, advanced cruise missiles; restricting the B-2 Stealth bomber to 20 planes, and canceling the Midgetman missile.

U.S. officials noted that--just as Bush was ready in his proposal to trim the nuclear submarine fleet that is the core of U.S. strategic defenses--the Yeltsin proposal would cut deeply into the large, land-based missile force that the Soviet Union has developed as the basis for its nuclear arsenal.

When Bush and Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty here last summer, the United States had a total of 11,714 warheads, according to the Arms Control Assn., an independent organization in Washington. The Soviet Union had an estimated 10,741, according to the same organization. Under the treaty, the totals would drop about 30%.

Yeltsin has been caught between his supporters on the left, most of whom have favored much bigger and faster arms reductions than those negotiated so far with the West, and the military, which has grown increasingly restive with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

On Monday, Yeltsin flew to the southern Russian port of Novorossiysk to promise the Black Sea Fleet that it would remain intact, as its commanders want, and to ask in return for support for his disarmament initiative.

“I want to emphasize that we are not talking about our unilateral nuclear disarmament,” Yeltsin said in his speech. “The United States is taking parallel steps in a gesture of goodwill. It is now possible and necessary to move much further along this road.”

Bush and Yeltsin had informed each other of their planned moves, according to U.S. and Russian officials, and to some extent coordinated them, as Bush and Gorbachev had agreed to do at their last meeting in Madrid in October.

“The positions of both sides are close,” Yeltsin said of the latest Bush proposals.

During his discussion with Baker, Yeltsin showed himself a master of one of the most complex subjects in international relations, a senior State Department official commented, and he dealt with the most sensitive and intricate issues with confidence and a surprising command of detail.

“A clear program on how to do it all? Not yet, but that is not surprising,” the official added, describing the Yeltsin undertaking as “ambitious.”

Although the plan itself stemmed from Yeltsin’s need to shift resources away from the military and into redevelopment of the Russian economy, the official characterized it as “something that is extraordinarily hopeful . . . premised on the concept that we are going to be friends and removing the concept of adversary from our relationship.”

Andrei V. Kozyrev, the Russian foreign minister, explained the philosophy behind the Yeltsin initiative to journalists: “In principle, we no longer view the United States as an enemy . . . and therefore, our missiles are no longer targeted at civilian or military targets in the United States.”

Baker, however, carefully evaded questions about whether the United States would consider matching the Russian move.

“This issue will be discussed in some detail and in some depth when the presidents meet at Camp David,” he said.

Although speaking only for Russia, Yeltsin said the measures had been coordinated with other members of the Commonwealth, including Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, which inherited the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal when it broke up last month. Yeltsin also has command of the Commonwealth’s strategic nuclear weapons.

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